About two years ago we met the Anxiety Dragon via the Duponts’ excellent book The Anxiety Cure for Kids. The Dragon had been dogging my youngest child Charlotte for quite a while at home as well as on trips to Disneyland. The whole story about how Charlotte fought the Dragon at Disneyland can be found here.
Our family had been looking forward to a trip to Walt Disney World for several years, and the main factor in the delay was the concern over Charlotte’s anxiety. We were not sure how she would react to brand new attractions and situations, so we decided to wait until we had the situation under control at our home park before we ventured to WDW.
After writing the original Anxiety Dragon article, I received a lot of feedback from readers who did not have the luxury of multiple visits to a Disney park to practice methods to defeat the Dragon. In some cases, they had one shot at an attraction, and that was it until next year’s visit. Living so near Disneyland, we were able to take our battle plan very slowly. Sometimes just walking through a queue or sitting near an attraction was all we would accomplish in a visit to the park. However, with only five days to see four parks and no plans for returning anytime soon, we had to be fairly confident that Char would do at least some of the attractions. We needed a revised game plan for facing the Dragon.
Long-Term Game Plan
The first part of our game plan began many months before we even got on a plane to Florida. We purchased the Unofficial Guide to Walt Disney World and gave Char a pack of sticky notes. My husband explained to Charlotte that she could read the book and mark attractions with a “yes,” “no,” or “no way in heck” sticky note. In doing this we were giving Char a feeling of control over her vacation, and the sticky notes let us know which attractions sounded frightening to her. Char spent hours with the Unofficial Guide marking pages. At first, she was a bit skittish at some of the terms used to describe an attraction. “Mom, it says that Peter Pan is a fast-loading attraction. Fast-loading!” However, once we explained what all the terms meant, the book was an invaluable resource for Charlotte.
Test Track: The surprise hit of the trip for the whole family. Photo by Lisa Perkis.
The next day at MGM Studios we had Rock ‘n’ Roller Coaster on the list of rides that Charlotte would sit out, so we decided to do a child swap first thing in the morning. She would wait in the queue with us, then head out the exit and wait in the gift shop until swapping time. Unfortunately, Char took one look at the innocuous show building, and began to panic. The interesting thing was that no part of the ride is visible from the outside, and no screams can be heard from the enclosed attraction.
Maybe it was just the unknown factor, or maybe a part of her thought we were going to grab her and force her on the ride at the last minute (something we had never done, and tried to reassure about her over and over.) Whatever it was, Char wasn’t having any of it. She would not listen to any distraction attempts, and at one point broke free of my hand and ran the other way through the crowd—completely uncharacteristic of her normal behavior.
“But we are not even putting her on the ride, it’s just the queue!” I fumed in my mind as I tried to calm her down. Eventually, between me and my husband, we herded her into the queue, then out the exit. Once in the gift shop, she immediately calmed own, but I was left a bit shaken. It seemed we took a few giant steps back from the triumph of Test Track the day before.
Not happy about being taken through the queue of Rock ‘n’ Roller Coaster, Char wants to head to the gift shop as soon as possible. Photo by Lisa Perkis.
That was the trend for the rest of the vacation. Some battles easily won, and some were saved for another day. The whole idea of the yeti was so frightening we barely got close enough to Expedition Everest in Animal Kingdom to make out the ride vehicles traveling up the mountain. Waiting in the queue to head out the exit was out of the question. Eventually, she stood in the exit patio and watched the cars speed by, but it took at least a half hour of acclimation before we could inch our way over. Curse you, WDW planning DVD.
This was as close as Char got to the terrible Yeti. Photo by Lisa Perkis.
On the positive side, Char surprised us a few times by volunteering to try rides she never would consider at home, like Kali River Rapids (similar to Grizzly River Rapids in Disney’s California Adventure park) and Splash Mountain. These were attractions we didn’t even approach her about because we assumed we would hit a wall of anxiety as we normally did at home. Unfortunately, we were heading out the gates of the Magic Kingdom before she decided she wanted to try Splash, so we were too tired to walk back and ride it, but hopefully she will be more amenable to it at our home park.
Anger
One success had nothing to do with Charlotte. My husband and I were careful to keep our cool with our daughter during the tense moments when her anxiety flared up. One thing we had agreed after witnessing the panic over Rock ‘n’ Roller Coaster was not to let anxiety spoil her memories of the trip or give added stress to the rest of the family by forcing too many confrontations with the Dragon. We wanted to keep things as positive as possible.
Whenever I felt my frustration level escalate, I would think about a father and daughter we observed in the Living Seas at Epcot. The little girl was afraid to enter a room with an enormous, toothy model of Bruce from Finding Nemo. The girl was about 4 years old and was crying and evading her dad’s grasp, who was trying to grab her and drag her into the room. The dad quickly lost his cool and picked up the girl by her upper arms and carried her kicking and screaming towards the shark. The dad was loudly berating the girl out of frustration and embarrassment. Though I was disgusted at the father’s behavior, I knew very well the feelings that were causing him to act in an inappropriate way. DuPont comments:
“Though it’s normal and understandable to be frustrated by the limitations caused by a child’s anxiety, remember that you can be angry at the anxiety problem and not at the anxious child.”
Whenever I felt those feelings of frustration rise up, I would think of that scene in the Living Seas and calm down. That’s not the kind of parent I want to be, and it obviously does not help an already tense situation. It was a good mental reminder during the trip to keep a sense of compassion and see the overall picture of the happy trip we wanted to experience.
Overall, we learned a lot more about the Anxiety Dragon, for better or worse. Charlotte learned that she was able to try brand new attractions she had never even seen before and enjoy herself. My husband and I learned that the Dragon can still catch us off guard, so it’s important to always have a strategy in place for dealing with it. Thankfully, the wonderful memories we have from our trip to Florida far outweigh the tense and frustrating moments. And, most importantly, we will head back to our home parks with more insight to help Charlotte face her ongoing battles with anxiety.
Charlotte found plenty of things at Walt Disney World she loved: World Showcase was the highlight of her trip. Vive la France! Photo by Lisa Perkis.
